Dissappointed at the phone-ins by author

About to start book 2 a bit annoyed at how close to great this story would be if it literally wasn't written to distract from itself. Book 1: By shear plot convenience, the MC finds a reason to saddle himself with an emotionally dysfunctional female "supporting" character and an increasingly white knight type dog. Leave the dog alone, let it care about the MC enough not to throw him into danger. Why are you LITERALLY writing a dog into a person to create conflict when the dog is great to start with. The MC has a GREAT personality for making the plot move along, but it's written away by some dumb just cause excuse for why this fucked up girl is super important while he cares about no one else. Even then his cold logic could tell him there are KIDS and sideways 8 number of more worthwhile people or even pets. JUST FOR FILLER.

8 people found this helpful

Main characters are unlikeable

The narration of this story is really well done. That's the reason I finished book one. He puts feeling behind the words actually making the characters likeable at times.

Okay, Charles is either a high functioning autistic or a world class jerk. The book doesn't tell you so you're left guessing. He has a one track mind and that's to find his sister. But to accomplish his goal he forsakes literally everyone else even though he has the power to save them.

Kiera (not Charles's sister) is just a jerk. There's trauma in her past so she doesn't care about anyone apart form her sister. Kiera is pretty awful.

I did like the dog. The dog was the best part of the book.

5 people found this helpful

More than just a series

This is more than The start to what could be a potentially nice serious it's also a bridge to the author's other series as you will come to understand when you meet the goddess of dungeons Something that is really interesting about this series is the main character Show signs of being a highly functional autistic person Andhaving certain mental problems when it comes to social interaction Some more people may see him as cold But it's the circumstances as well as his mental state their cause him to be That way oso something to note there are times when you can get frustrated with different characters but there is a payout at the end of the book

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It’s just ok

I could get past chapter 6. It’s like I’m listening to the 1st draft. I just can’t listen to more of it.

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did no one read over this before publishing?

the writing was painful... narrator did his best with what he had to work with

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Not good

Trash. Everything is given with no reason. The narrator is boring. The characters are dull and predictable. The magic system is absolutely trash

1 person found this helpful

Can't wait for the next audio

I thought this was going to be another end of the world books but I truly get like the main characte. Charles is one of the guys the believe human being are all monsters before monsters are introduced to the world. Allie want to believe that human beings are kind hearted people that will fight to survive but finds out the hard way that human being aren't all the same. Take the time to read or lesson about how the God 's are thrust into their lives.

1 person found this helpful

Hampered by Poor Research on Psychological Trauma

It was incredibly smart to put this into a publisher's pack because if this were one book, I'd be complaining about the first novel ending without a proper climax or denouement. As the end of Act I in a larger novel (as it has become), the anti-climax sets up the action for Act II.

Having said that, the female protagonist in the novel has an anti-social personality disorder due to trauma that occurred sixteen years ago for a period of two weeks and that she has not yet recovered from despite sixteen years and the love and support of a family as well as therapy. Personality disorders are usually the result of ongoing abuse - usually from a parent or at least an adult who is regularly within a child's life for years and/or for a period during early childhood development. There are exceptions as people have varied levels of adaptability, but with the immense amount of support and recovery this character was given, it makes her come off as incredibly weak. Further, the protagonist presents many anti-social personality traits and these are presented as pragmatic survival traits rather than a personality disorder resulting from childhood trauma. The author could have had the trauma occur more recently and this wouldn't be quite as terrible damseling and he should definitely not have the hero present the same personality traits as virtues. . . as anti-social tendencies are not virtues - especially in a survival situation because most people are good and want to help and get along with others. That's reality. Sure, there are some bad people who prey on others, but they're the exception rather than the rule and they can usually be sussed out if you're attentive.

However, it seems like the author may have some anti-social tendencies as the vast majority of people the characters encounter are ridiculously stupid, evil, and lazy. There are going to be people like that in any post-apocalyptic setting, but this author makes almost all the characters encountered be utterly detestable.

I'm willing to bend on a lot of the plot issues. There are a lot of ways for the "gods" to get over boredom that don't require an apocalypse and they could easily solve being forgotten by showing back up in the world. It also is poor quest/game design to give a quest that can't reasonably be completed and yet that is what happens despite the whole world being turned into a game board and these few "pieces" being made into more important champions by the gods. Why aren't they playing multiple games throughout all regions of the world? Are all the champions and monster champions going to show up in the United States? Are we meant to believe that all the people in the cages being treated as cattle by the monsters are all emotional weaklings that have no drive to live or just that the hero believes something that stupid? The drive to survive is incredibly powerful and this is a fairly new threat. These aren't people beaten down over years of trauma. They've had a couple weeks of it. There's just so much silliness in the plotting that it feels as if the author did not have any beta readers or that he is not letting them give feedback on the plot outline (or that he is not taking feedback or that they're only allowed to give positive feedback). So many of these things could have easily been fixed early on or have been fixed with only a bit more difficulty later on. None of them destroy the narrative on their own, but they certainly hurt it. They serve as distractions that break the reader out of experiencing the story and push us back into merely listening to it.

Finally, the narrator seems to have very few voices to draw from and this can become confusing - particularly among the female cast. It is possible he has as few voices for male characters, but as all the male characters (other than the protag) are minor characters who don't speak much, I can't tell. He does do some different voices for the "god" characters though (both male and female), so I guess he just doesn't have many normal female character voices. Otherwise, I quite enjoyed the performance.

awesome story

got lost listening to this book creating their new world in my head can't wait to listen to the next in the series

It had possibilities

Having tried writing myself, I know how very difficult it is to craft a good plot, create characters that engage some emotion from the reader (even if that is dislike) and write dialog that doesn't come across as completely stilted. So kudos to Mr. Kern for getting a story down on paper and getting it published, even if it did not succeed in any of those areas. There might be a decent book in there somewhere and maybe a (very) good editor could have pulled something out of this, but it still would most likely appeal to a limited audience after a lot of work. To be fair, I couldn't continue past the fifth chapter and I got that far only because I was stuck lon a plane with nothing else downloaded. It didn't help that the narrator was so heavyhanded and melodramatic, but that could mostly be the result of what he had to work with. Unless you are a 12-year old who reads nothing but gamer lit, don't waste your time.